Object of the Week
December 4, 2014
Object of the Week
By: Hayden DeBruler ‘17
Miro, Joan
Le Lézard aux Plumes d'Or Frontispiece / 1971
Edition of 50
Gift of Dr. Steven G. Conant
DePauw University Permanent Art Collection
After Le Lézard aux Plumes d'Or Frontispiece
When you walk into the night, land,
sky one geometry, does it occur
to you to lap the deep lake water,
create its waves with the ridges
of your tongue? One, to hit a dock,
the other, to swarm the coast for me.
The ambiguity in Miro’s lithograph, Le Lézard aux Plumes d'Or Frontispiece, mirrors that found in poetry. Line breaks three images, one for each line itself, “when you walk into the night land,” and, “sky one geometry, does it occur,” the other implied in connection, “land, sky one geometry.” In this way the arrows at the bottom of the print, one driving towards the sky, its star, the other backwards, in regression, give the black background an orientation; the moment when horizon bleeds into night and transitions to become the product of knowing which direction you came from. The figure in the center embodies ambiguity through its perspective, blue eyes pinched between red running down its center, seems to extend in the direction of the viewer, and could also be seen as an abstract figure in two dimensions, compounded by a lack of depth perception in the night. It stands between the arrows, the liminal space of direction, choice, seems to speak to the poetry Miro composed for.
Hayden DeBruler is from Greenville, South Carolina. DePauw Class of 2017, Creative Writing and Art History Major. She is a volunteer with the Peeler Art Center Galleries. Please contact Christie Anderson, University Registrar, to schedule a time for your students to see this print.